Ethiopian airliner crashed into sea, official says

Ethiopian airliner crashed into sea, official says

BEIRUT — Lebanese security officials say an Ethiopian airliner with about 90 on board has crashed into sea.

The Ethiopian Airlines plane disappeared off the radar shortly after takeoff from Beirut.

The official said contact was lost about 45 minutes after the departure early today.

The plane was headed to Ethiopia. About 50 of the passengers were Lebanese, the official said.

He asked that his name not be used because he is not authorized to speak to the media.

Saudi girl to be beaten for having phone at school

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — A teenage girl has been sentenced to a 90-lash flogging and two months in prison as punishment for assaulting a teacher, a Saudi judge said in an interview published Sunday.

Human-rights group Amnesty International said the assault happened after the girl was caught with a camera phone at school.

The teenager’s name was not immediately available. She could be spared with a pardon from King Abdullah, said Judge Riyadh al-Meihdib.

He said the teacher refused to forgive the girl, who will not appeal the case. The teacher’s condition was unknown, and the newspaper had no details about the dispute.

Camera phones are banned at the school. Amnesty said the girl is 13.

Sweden rattled by Somali militants in its midst

STOCKHOLM — Ten subway stops from downtown Stockholm is “little Mogadishu,” a drab suburb of the Swedish capital where radical Islamists are said to be recruiting the sons of Somali immigrants for jihad in the Horn of Africa.

Police and residents say about 20 have joined al-Shabab, an al-Qaida-linked group waging a bloody insurgency against Somalia’s government, and many of them came from the suburb of Rinkeby — the heart of Sweden’s Somali community. According to SAPO, the Swedish state security police, five of them have been killed and 10 are still at large in Somalia.

The issue has gained notice at a time of worsening fears of Islamic radicalism in the Scandinavian countries, home to more than 40,000 Somalis who have fled their war-ravaged homeland.

Scientists create model of monster ‘Frankenstorm’

LOS ANGELES — Think the recent wild weather that hammered California was bad? Experts are imagining far worse.

As torrential rains pelted wildfire-stripped hillsides and flooded highways, a team of scientists hunkered down at the California Institute of Technology to work on a “Frankenstorm” scenario — a mother lode wintry blast that could potentially sock the Golden State.

The hypothetical but plausible storm would be similar to the 1861-62 extreme floods that temporarily moved the state capital from Sacramento to San Francisco and forced the then-governor to attend his inauguration by rowboat.

The scenario “is much larger than anything in living memory,” said project manager Dale Cox with the U.S. Geological Survey.

Okinawa vote pressures Japan on US Marine base

TOKYO — Japan’s prime minister said today he may nix a key military deal with Washington on relocating U.S. troops, after a local election in Okinawa showed that residents oppose any new Marine base in their region.

Residents of Nago elected a mayor who is staunchly against moving a base there from a larger city nearby — plans which Washington considers fundamental to its troop realignment in the region. An agreement on the relocation was made under the previous government that lost power last year.

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama said the results of Sunday’s election reflected the will of the people, and that Japan would completely re-examine its accord with the U.S.

Obama to skip jury duty

BRIDGEVIEW, Ill. — President Barack Obama will be skipping jury duty after being summoned in Illinois.

The administration official confirmed to The Associated Press on Sunday that the president alerted the court weeks ago that he won’t be able to make it. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because she was not authorized to speak publicly.

Obama was summoned for jury duty at the Bridgeview courthouse in suburban Chicago starting today. The summons had arrived at the Obama home on Chicago’s South Side.

Associated Press